Will they ever go home?

The refugees are building a life, but the fighting is never far away

EVERY so often Leila Bitar slips out of Altinozu Camp and across the border from Turkey into Syria to visit the grave of her son. A 30-year-old fighter in the Free Syrian Army, he died in battle eight months ago in Latakia, in north-west Syria. Leila unzips a little pink purse attached to her belt and fishes out a passport photograph of a young man. Two of her seven remaining children are fighting on—they come to the camp every fortnight or so for a few days’ rest—but their brother’s picture has already begun to fade and crease.

Leila is one of 1,350 Syrian Sunnis to have taken refuge in Altinozu, about 20km (12 miles) inside Turkey. A converted tobacco warehouse, it smells clean and is well run. Each family has its own room, with electricity and a stove. Refugees can go out in daylight hours, to buy food with their 80 lira ($43) monthly ration, or to earn some money working on the land.

When Altinozu opened, in June 2011, the refugees used to gather to mourn the death of a fighter and chant slogans against Bashar Assad and his regime in Syria. But, camp officials say, normal life has asserted itself. Down one flank of the site a shop sells toothbrushes, plastic footballs and Doritos. In the school they have purged the textbooks of all references to the Assads, but complain that they cannot afford enough of them. In Room 166 little Emile Mahmout, just two months old, sleeps innocent and untroubled, one of 200 children born in the camp. Turkish life, the officials say, has civilised the refugees.

Yet the fighting is never far from people’s minds. Slogans call for solidarity. One wall carries a cartoon of Mr Assad swinging with a noose around his neck, his tongue sticking out. Beshar Mergan, an English teacher, recalls his brothers back home fighting in Latakia with the Free Boys of the Coast. He knows that the regime recently recaptured Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, but he is sure the rebels will eventually prevail. “We have climbed 1,000 of the 3,000 stairs to victory,” he insists.

People used to think they would be in the camp only a few months before Mr Assad fell. But time is dragging. Old men sit absently on benches or shuffle to the showers. Fifteen-year-old Reem Selma is marbling paper. She has been waiting a year to go home. Asked to tell how she came to Altinozu, she looks down, touches her headscarf and searches for the story of that terrible journey. But the words will not come.